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CHRISTIANITY TRIUMPHANT (2 of 5)

Diocletian had created vice-emperors to help him rule, and his death left an emperor in the western half of the empire and one in the eastern half. Roman soldiers in Britannia chose Constantine as emperor of the western half, but they had to fight for it against Maxentius, the son of a former vice-emperor who claimed himself emperor in the west and also had an army. In the year 312 they fought the Battle of the Milvian Bridge just north of Rome, and Constantine's army won. Constantine set up his authority in Rome, and as Supreme Pontiff he gave recognition to the god that had been his father's favorite: Sol Invictus, the Syrian sun god that had been brought to Rome by the boy-emperor Varius Avitus some sixty years before.

Constantine's half of the empire was five or more percent Christian. His mother, Helena, was among the Christians, and Constantine had become sympathetic with the god of the Christians. Constantine came to an agreement with the emperor of the eastern half of the empire, Licinius. The two recognized each other's rule, and they agreed on the Edict of Toleration, which gave full equality with other religions and stipulated that the property taken from Christians during the persecutions was to be returned. But it did not work out.

Constantine became Christianity's champion and patron and Licinius grew fearful of the respect that Christians in his realm in the east had for Constantine. Licinius expelled Christians from his household and executed a few bishops. In late 324, Constantine's forces defeated those under Licinius, and Constantine became emperor of the entire empire. He had Licinius executed by strangulation, and that same year, 324, he founded his new capital city that would be called Constantinople.

Christianity had taken about the same length of time -- about three centuries -- that it took Buddhism to acquire imperial support (under Asoka). Constantine gave the bishop of Rome imperial property where a new cathedral, the Lateran Basilica, would rise, and he provided for the building of other Christian churches across his part of the empire. He allowed people to will their property to the Church. He exempted the clergy from taxation, from military service and forced labor -- as had been granted to the priests of other recognized religions. The tax exemptions for the Christian clergy were followed by a number of wealthy men rushing to join the clergy, and Constantine corrected this by making it illegal for rich pagans to claim tax exemptions as Christian priests.

In the minds of many, opulence had been a sign of legitimacy of power. The powerful were supposed to live in an ornate dwelling on a good stretch of land, perhaps wear bejeweled crowns, wear fancy robes and to speak to people from thrones rather than from simple chairs. The Church now moved to an opulent style that imitated this look of legitimacy.

Constantine had not been baptized, but he appears to have become increasingly devoted to Christianity. He wrote of his successes as an indication of favor from Christianity's god. He attributed the failures of those recent emperors who had persecuted the Christians as an indication of the Christian god's power. Constantine granted more lands to the Church. He began a new series in the construction of Christian churches that were much grander than the Christians had before his time. And he gave Christian bishops the authority of judges -- against whom there would be no appeal.

Annoyed with the disagreement among the Christians over the question of the nature of Jesus, Constantine called for the Church's first ecumenical (general) council. Of Christianity's 1,800 or so bishops, 318 attended the conference -- most of them from the eastern half of the empire. Constantine presided over the meeting. One group of bishops, led by the bishop Arius, claimed that God and Jesus were separate beings, that because Jesus was God's son there must have been a time when Jesus did not exist. Another group of bishops could not accept the notion that Jesus had been created from nothing and insisted that he had to be divine and therefore a part of God. The bishops allowed Constantine the role of Church theologian -- he was after all, emperor. And he decided against Arius. For the sake of unity Constantine decided that Bishop Arius and his supporters would be allowed to remain within the Church and would not be forced to recant, but those bishops who refused to sign the settlement at Nicaea were to be exiled. Constantine also ruled that various other Christian groupings who did not conform to established doctrine would be considered heretics and would have their meeting places confiscated.

With the power of the state behind them, the bishops extended their authority within the Church. Cutting off the possibility of common Christians choosing their own bishop, the bishops ruled that in no province of the empire was anyone to be made bishop except by other bishops within that province. The bishops granted to the bishop of Alexandria papal authority over the eastern half of the empire, and to the bishop of Rome they granted papal authority over the western portion of the empire.

Constantine created severe penalties against adultery, concubinage and prostitution. For a variety of other crimes, people were to have their eyes gouged out or their legs maimed. Influenced by Christianity, he ended crucifixion as a form of execution. He ended branding criminals and slaves on their face -- the face according to Christians having been formed in the image of divine beauty. And in keeping with Christianity's devotion to the family, he forbade the separation of a family of slaves.

Some conversions were accommodations to the belief that the emperor was a Christian -- an accommodation to state power. And the Church's new wealth helped. Having moved from simple buildings to those that were grand and imposing, the Church also made its rituals more splendid. In place of a simple table for the rite of Holy Communion -- the Eucharist -- the Church now used a massive and ornate altar of marble studded with gems. The bishops were becoming more splendid in their dress.

And with an increase in wealth, the bishops were able to incease their charity. The Church built orphanages, hospitals, inns for travelers, and it founded old age homes, all of which helped increase Christianity's prestige and popularity.

The Church had left behind its original communal sharing and its sense of equality among members, and now pagan habits were modified to fit Christianity. Some evangelists, Gregory the Wonder Worker among them, facilitated conversions by encouraging Christians to have the feasts of their old gods celebrated as feasts of Christian martyrs. In the western half of the empire the popular pagan feast day celebrated as the birthday of Sol Invictus and the winter solstice, December 25th, began being celebrated as the day of birth of Jesus Christ. Christians in the eastern half of the empire disagreed with this and chose instead January 6th -- the day of another great pagan festival -- as the day of Jesus' birth. This difference between western and eastern Christianity was to continue into modern times.

Among the pagan practices adopted by Christians in bringing pagans into the fold were a devotion to relics, the kissing of holy objects as an act of reverence, genuflection and the use of candles and incense. But the object of Christianity remained the same: the worship of Jesus Christ and obedience to what was seen as God's laws. What mattered from the Christian point of view was to whom people prayed. Those who had prayed to pagan gods for rain and for bestowing fertility upon women would now be praying to Christian saints. Many peasants who had venerated a pagan female guardian of grain would transfer that veneration to a new guardian and creator of their grain: Mary, the mother of Jesus.

In his early fifties and near death, Constantine finally chose to be baptized a Christian, to prepare himself for the hereafter. Performing the baptism was the elderly bishop and a Church historian: Eusebius, another eunuch, like Origen, who had castrated himself to combat sinful temptations. Eusebius was a bishop of Caesaraea (in what today is Israel) and then Nicomedia, in Asia Minor. He claimed that just before his death Constantine told him that the day before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge he and his entire army saw a flaming cross against the sun and the words "conquer with this." Eusebius' claim accompanied his opinion that Constantine was the chosen agent of God, that Constantine had been "crowned with the virtues which are inherent in God," and that Constantine "received in his soul the emanations that come from God." (The Tricennial Oration, c. 5:1.)